Minutes:  FACAS Meeting,   11/15/07

 

Time and Location:  10:30 – 11:45 am, KL 505

 

Present:  D. Biers, G. Doyle (chair), E. Gustafson, L. Laubach, Y. Raffoul,

 R. Wells, S. Wilhoit (Faculty Board)

 

Absent: P. Johnson,  T. Lasley, C. Letavec, D. Sink, L. Snyder

 

1. Minutes from 11/08/07 were approved as amended.

 

2. An article, “After the Big Decision: Post-tenure Review Analyzed,” was passed out to the committee.

 

3.  Comments concerning Senate Document 06-08, “Evaluating Faculty Teaching for the Purposes of Tenure, Promotion, and Merit:”

 

  1. Steve Wilhoit reviewed document.  It was agreed that it was well-written.
  2. The document considers summative procedures, not formative.
  3. Student assessment of teaching must not be the only means of judging teaching; there must be multiple measures.
  4. While there are several measurement techniques used by departments, there is no uniformity across the campus.
  5. The point was raised that we should look at learning outcomes, rather than teaching.  But how do we judge learning?
  6. University assessment considers learning outcomes.
  7. Do student assessments have questionable benefits?  Need to train chairs/deans how to interpret the results.  There is definitely a gender effect – women receive lower grades.  Often there is course level, elective/required, age, and grading effect.
  8. Some were against student assessment, others for it.  It was suggested that the student assessment be limited to a few questions with written response after each fill-in-the-circle question.
  9. Does every faculty member have to be reviewed in every course, every year?
  10. How do teaching/learning results affect PTR?
  11. For an in-class review, it is necessary to consider both knowledge/organization of material and performance/interaction of instructor/student.
  12. Must add responsibility of reporting evaluation outcomes to whomever.
  13. Suggested an open senate meeting (January?) to discuss use of learning outcomes as a measure of teacher effectiveness.

 

4. The next meeting will be at 10:30 am on Thursday, November 29, 2007 in KL 505..